1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to devices that are used in a quick serve kitchen to manage the amount of cooked product throughout the day and limit the time products are held by properly discarding expired food.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Quick serve restaurants strive to serve fresh food to customers in one to two minutes. This type of operation requires the cooked components of the finished food product to be prepared and held and then be finally assembled to the customer's orders. Current operations have multiple menu items and therefore need a device to help manage the cooking and holding operation.
A current method in the industry uses paper charts that show the kitchen staff how much food to cook throughout the day. The manager must select a sales forecast, print or prepare these charts and post them in the kitchen. Therefore, it would be advantageous if the information was displayed on an electronic display and the data was processed to show the exact information required for cooking throughout the day.
A current device in the industry uses LEDs (light emitting diodes) and has 12 fixed product locations on the display. This device looks complex and is expensive. Therefore, it would be advantageous if the information were displayed on an electronic graphic display screen to allow for many more food products to be managed by the system.
A current method in the industry is for the kitchen staff to perform the following steps throughout the day:                1—Look up a food item on a chart for the current time of day and note the food needed number;        2—Observe the amount of food already prepared;        3—Calculate “food needed”−“food cooked”=quantity of food to prepare;        4—Prepare the food and place it in the holding container; and        5—Start a product hold timer.These steps are repeated each time the batch of food is sold or expires or the sales level increases or decreases. This method requires the staff to perform time consuming, error prone, multiple steps to insure that fresh cooked food is always available. Due to the complexity of the menu and the time consuming steps required to follow the process, the posted charts are ignored. When the charts are ignored, the staff cooks too much food for the current sales so they will not run out. This leads the staff to hold the product past the expiration time, and instead of discarding the waste, it is served to the customer. Therefore, it would be advantageous to replace the chart lookup and manual calculation with an automated device and system that monitors the hold timers and displays on a graphics screen the proper amount of product to cook. This allows the staff to perform efficiently and results in fresher food being served to the customer.        
Currently, there are many algorithms that are used to calculate required products in a quick serve restaurant. Additionally, many point of sale systems only save ½ hour sales and the total of each product sold throughout the day. An improved and simplified method for calculating products required throughout the day is to use a ratiometric calculation. The calculation for a product for any time period is the ratio. The improved formula uses minimum data and is an easy method for determining the amount of food required in the restaurant for any period throughout the day.
A current device in the industry calculates the pans required to fill and illuminates an LED red to indicate to the user to cook food and fill a pan with food. This device only allows for full pans and does not display how many patties to put in a pan. Therefore, it would be advantageous to calculate the number of patties required in the restaurant and divide the patties required by max (maximum) patties per pan as adjusted by the user. The device can then display a list of products to cook with the number of patties next to them. This method allows the staff finer control over the quantity of food being cooked to maintain fresh product to the customer.
Current devices in the industry, called product hold timers, are used to time how long the food product is being held. They are generally stand-alone timers that indicate when the hold time has expired. To calculate the quantity of food to cook, the staff is required to read and count up how many timers are running to determine the present quantity of cooked food being held. Therefore, it would be advantageous for the reading of the timers to be electronically connected in a network. This would insure an accurate monitoring of the timers running and free up the staff for other work.
Currently, managers in a restaurant manually program the hold timers when new products are added or removed from the menu. Therefore, it would be advantageous for a timing system to be linked together so that the timers can be programmed from a central location. This data may include hold time, cook time and product names.
Current timer devices in the industry called product hold timers are used to time how long products are held. When the menu changes during the day, such as breakfast, lunch and dinner, the product hold timers need to be reprogrammed or additional timers are required with different hold times. Therefore, it would be advantageous for the timer system to contain multiple menus and have one key that selects a set of timers for the menu being served.
Currently, managers in a restaurant keep watch on the time to instruct the kitchen staff to begin cooking the next menu items. Therefore, it would be advantageous for a device to remind the staff to change menus at a programmed time.
Currently, managers in a restaurant use various manual or paper techniques to remember to select a sales forecast. This sales forecast called product level charts determine how much food to cook for the day. Therefore, it would be advantageous for a system to remind the manager to select a sales forecast.
Currently, managers in a restaurant use the point of sale system to run reports that they use for determining the products that they need to cook for the day. Many point of sale systems do not have this feature. Therefore, it would be advantageous for a device to hold multiple ½ hour sales and product mixes (quantity of products sold during a previous day). The manager could then select one of several ½ hour sales and product mix from a previous day that would match the coming day.
Current timing systems contain individual timers that need to be separately programmed. This is time consuming and can lead to programming errors. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a display screen that showed all the product locations in the restaurant. This screen would depict the timer locations in the restaurant and would allow the user to select the timer desired for that location. This feature will save time and effort by the manager.
Current product level systems in quick serve restaurants cannot determine how many pans of food are required and how many pans of food are already prepared. When too much product is prepared for a given sales level, the product will expire and either waste will increase or the expired product will be served to the customer. Therefore, it would be advantageous to monitor when too many pans of food product have been cooked. This error can be stored and displayed for future corrective action.
Current food product level systems and timers in quick serve restaurants cannot determine when a pan of cooked food has exceeded its hold time (i.e., the food product is now waste) and the product continues to be served. Therefore, it would be advantageous to monitor the timers for expiration, and if the timer is reset within a short period of time, count this as a “waste served” error. This error signal is then stored and displayed for corrective action.
Current product level systems and timers in quick serve restaurants cannot determine when a pan of cooked food is required but has not been filled. This action can be caused by not cooking the food on time, which effects speed of service, or not starting the product hold timer, which leads to poor quality food being served. Therefore, it would be advantageous to monitor how long a product is on a “To be cooked” list, and if it exceeds a multiple of cook times, count this event as a “Cook delay error”. This error signal can be recorded and displayed for corrective action.
Current product level systems and timers in quick serve restaurants cannot determine when a pan of cooked food has expired and has not been discarded by the user. This action can cause expired food being served, which effects food quality. Therefore, it would be advantageous to monitor how long a product is on a “To be discarded” list, and if the staff member does discard the product and stop the hold timer which removes it from the list, after a period of time, count this event as a “Discard delay error”.
Current product level and timer systems do not record quality errors occurring in the kitchen of a quick serve restaurant. Additionally, the office computer is usually busy with point of sales accounting work. Therefore, it would be advantageous to collect and record these errors in a small, embedded electronic system.
Current product level and timer systems do not calculate quality errors occurring in the kitchen of a quick serve restaurant. Therefore, it would be advantageous assign a point value to each error and calculate a grade by subtracting the points from 100. A grade scale is then created for the kitchen staff. When errors are created, they bring the grade down. The errors can be counted over a period of time, such as at ½ hour increments. When errors become older than ½ hour, the points can be added back, therefore increasing the staff grade.
Current quick serve restaurants do not display to the kitchen staff the quality of the work they are performing. Therefore, it would be advantageous to create a device that displays a numeric (0-100) or a letter (A-F) quality grade directly to the staff so that the staff can monitor the quality of their work. The displayed grade then becomes a feedback device to allow the kitchen staff to know when quality is falling and to improve their work.
Current quick serve restaurants do not chart the errors that occur by the kitchen staff during the day. Therefore, it would be advantageous to relocate the error data from the embedded system to the office computer via serial, USB or network connection at the end of day. A program can then create charts and graphs for the day. This allows the store manager to review the quality of performance of the kitchen crew during the time the store manager is not present.
Current quick serve restaurants do not collect the quality errors that occur by the kitchen staff during the day. This does not allow the storeowners to view the quality of the kitchen staff over many restaurants or over a time period. Therefore, it would be advantageous for the quality error data to be transferred to a database via connection to the Internet to be used for training and coaching of the staff.
Current quick serve restaurant management does not have the ability to receive automated emails on the quality of the kitchen staff performance. Therefore, it would be advantageous for the improved product management system to automatically send emails to management on the performance of the kitchen staff.
Currently, managers in a quick serve restaurant cannot see in real time what quality errors are occurring in the restaurant. Therefore, it would be advantageous to create a display called a “Manager's Unit” that is mounted in the manager's workstation (preferably up front by the customers) to show the errors as the errors occur. This display would show the time, type and product of the quality error that occurred. This would allow the manager to immediately coach the staff to ensure that the quality of the product remains high.
Currently, managers in a quick serve restaurant cannot see errors or a history of the current day's errors broken down by shifts. This data could be used to focus future staff training. Therefore, it would be advantageous to create a display to show the history of errors broken down by shifts. This would allow the manager to focus the training on the shift that is under-performing.
Currently, managers in a restaurant cannot see what products need to be cooked by the kitchen staff and if they are performing the cooking cycles in a timely manner. Therefore, it would be advantageous to display the list of products to cook preferably up front by the manager's workstation. The manager can then coach the staff before errors occur.
Currently, managers in a restaurant become busy with customers and forget to perform recurring tasks. An example is cleaning utensils, checking temperatures of cooked products, and checking the cleanliness of the dining and restroom areas. Therefore, it would be advantageous if there were a device mounted by the manager's workstation that contained a display and timers that could be programmed to remind the manager to perform theses recurring tasks.
Currently, some quick serve restaurant kitchens are too large to have one display that shows the staff what to cook. Therefore, it would be advantageous to create a slave display that showed a second area of cooks what to cook in the restaurant.